I’ve never played Shamans extensively but from my limited experience, the way Totems and aggro are interacting don’t feel right.
If you pull a mob but don’t have any threat on its table (for example, body pulling a pack) and then summon a Totem, the mob will immediately aggro and attack the Totem. Because Totems only have about 5 health, this means they are guaranteed to be instantly destroyed.
This is particularly obnoxious with Fire Nova Totem. As an AoE attack, I obviously want to use this with groups of enemies. But unless I first tab-attack each mob I pull to ensure I have some threat on their table, they will immediately destroy the Fire Nova Totem as soon as it spawns.
I don’t understand why this is happening. As with the Fire Nova Totem example, the mobs are aggroing the totem before it even has a chance to do anything. So I can’t imagine the Totems are pulling aggro by generating too much threat.
Can any Shammies advise if this is intended behaviour?
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It is intended, always been like this. Yes it’s annoying. Maybe cast stoneclaw right before?
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Stoneclaw doesn’t taunt. You use it at the beginning of a pull and don’t hit the mob that’s on it.
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Totems produce small amount of aggro and fire nova makes more than the rest
Use stone claw totem before nova to take mobs ur not hitting
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Thanks for the feedback, guys. It’s odd to me that Totems generate a small amount of threat when they spawn but no point in complaining about mechanics of a 20 year old game. Good to now understand.
Totems inherently do NOT create threat - OFFENSIVE FIRE TOTEMS create instant threat, barring searing totem, which will appear on the threat table once it casts firebolt.
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Fire Nova Totem is the only one that generates aggro when it’s summoned. You need to get on each mob’s threat table before you use it. It has always worked like this.
Magma/Searing do not generate threat on summon, but if you aren’t on a mob’s threat table, they will get killed after their first attack.
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Fun fact, npcs never do this in wsg 
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Yep, that’s the way it used to be. You have to drop stoneclaw and let it go for a couple seconds before dropping fire nova
Edit: only if you have multiple targets on you at once
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Thanks for clarifying the interactions between offensive and defensive Totems, this is all making more sense. It also makes Stoneclaw Totem more useful, I never really saw a use for it before.
Stoneclaw can keep you alive if you aggro lots of mobs unintentionally. Alternate between stoneclaw and earthbind to get out of sticky aggro situations. It can give you time to cast ghost wolf and GTFO immediately. It’s one of those abilities with a lot of understated creative uses
Yeah, I just always viewed Earthbind as more helpful for getting out of sticky situations but that does make sense. Will try that next time.
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It generates a small amount of threat, it doesnt taunt. It you already have aggro from attacking something it wont do anything.
It’s right in the description. I’m not saying it’s a good taunt, but it absolutely taunts. If you do a small enough amount of damage, it will taunt things off you.
Yea I know how its worded, and no it is functionally a “taunt”. The threat is tiny, if you’ve done basically anything it wont pull off you. Target dummies on the other hand are actual taunts.
I logged into game to test and yes it will taunt things off you. But not if you’ve done significant damage.
Sounds like this is the same argument as Voidwalker’s Taunt. There are inconsistencies in the games tooltips where sometimes Taunt is referred to as a mechanic that forces an NPC to attack you irrrspective of your threat (Warrior Taunt, Druid Growl, etc.) and sometimes refers to Taunt as an ability that merely generates a lot of threat (Voidwalker Taunt, Stoneclaw Totem Taunt, etc.)
classic design is very baffling most of the time
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Actual taunts are: warrior taunt, druid growl, and the new paladin, shaman, rogue, and warlock taunts that put your threat at the highest person on the table and force the mob to attack you for a few seconds.
There are also forced aggro mechanics like mocking blow, challenging shout that force
mobs to attack you for a few seconds but dont change your threat, so when it wears off it goes back to top person on table.
Stoneclaw doesnt do either of these, nor does pet growl, voidwalker torment, etc despite saying that on the tooltip. It just does a small amount of threat, which if you ignore the mob on pull will keep it off you, but if you’ve done any attacking (lightning bolt, a shock, autoing), it is not enough to pull it off you. You use it at the start of the pull to hold a second/third mob while you ignore it and kill the first.
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